Green Giant Announces Partnership with The Nature Conservancy

Green Giant has long been committed to reducing its footprint on everything it plants, produces, packages and brings to your table. Now, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Green Giant is taking that commitment to the environment one giant step further, by giving $200,000 to The Nature Conservancy to help fund an innovative project that will encourage greener farming practices to repair and protect a natural treasure — the Root River, one of Minnesota’s (home to Green Giant) best trout streams.

Through this project, Green Giant and The Nature Conservancy will work with growers to construct special storm water ponds and grass waterways to naturally filter runoff from fields using native plants and other sustainable techniques. These ponds and waterways also provide an ecological habitat for migratory birds, frogs and other wildlife. In addition to the nutrient management practices, cover crops will be incorporated to prevent erosion, suppress weeds and improve soil structure.

Throughout its century-long history, Green Giant has worked to reduce its environmental footprint through many measures including:

Reducing the amount of land and water needed to grow vegetables

Packing vegetables in smaller, lighter cans, so it takes less fuel to deliver them to supermarket shelves

Utilizing traditional seed breeding methods over the last 35 years to double the amount of sweet corn grown on an acre of land

Teaming up with growers to install a more efficient irrigation system that can reduce water use by more than a million gallons a year;

Switching to more earth-friendly paperboard to package frozen vegetables, saving approximately 54,000 trees annually in the process.

To learn more about this partnership and how Green Giant is making its footprint smaller visit www.greengiant.com or to learn more about supporting The Nature Conservancy visit www.nature.org.

“Green is more than part of our name. It’s the way we’ve been bringing delicious, healthy, vegetables to families for over 50 years”: says Garland Hill, marketing for Green Giant.

About Green Giant Green Giant started out in Le Sueur, Minnesota, as the Minnesota Valley Canning Company in 1903, when some 11,750 cases of white cream-style corn were sold in the company’s first year. For the past 100 years, the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant is where great tasting vegetables are grown and picked at the peak of perfection. The wide range of Green Giant canned and frozen vegetables includes Niblets corn, bagged and boxed classic frozen vegetables, frozen side dishes and Create a Meal! Meal Starter.

About The Nature Conservancy The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 18 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 117 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific. Visit The Nature Conservancy on the Web at www.nature.org.

Green Giant®, Niblets® and Create-A-Meal® are Reg. T.M.s of General Mills